Johnson & Johnson starts Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone

The introduction of thousands of Ebola treatment beds by the British and Sierra Leone governments and NGOs prevented an estimated 57,000 Ebola cases and 40,000 deaths in Sierra Leone up to February 2015, new research has found.

But a further 12,500 cases could have been averted if the beds been available even a month earlier, they calculate.

But Edmunds said it was essential that the public and governments understood that the earlier the response to a disease outbreak, the bigger the impact.

In the months following the Ebola outbreak, the World Health Organization was also heavily criticised for being slow to act. “The response was as rapid as it could have been [once it began], and a lot of resources were put in, but it is getting that action to be much earlier in the first place [that is important]”.

Elsewhere, in Liberia, another country originally hit hard by the disease, there has been criticism that a large portion of these intervention efforts arrived right as the outbreak petered out, leading to built Ebola treatment units that were left practically unused.

Given that the Ebola case fatality rate in Sierra Leone was near 70 per cent, the researchers estimate this averted 40,000 deaths.

Had they been installed a month earlier, tens of thousands more would have been avoided.

To date, Concern’s teams have conducted more than 16,500 burials, which have also helped to prevent the spread of Ebola.

At the height of the outbreak, in mid-September previous year, the three countries recorded more than 700 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of the deadly hemorrhagic virus in a single week. “It is our hope that this study will help to confirm the value of this vaccine regimen in Ebola control efforts – not just for Sierra Leone, but for the world”.

But experts agree there is no room for complacency – experience shows that the disease could easily break out again.

“Defeating this Ebola outbreak has been a long and hard journey for everybody in Sierra Leone”, said Professor Monty Jones, Special Adviser on Ebola to the President of Sierra Leone.

Johnson & Johnson has started a clinical trial to assess the safety and immunogenicity of its under development Ebola prime-boost vaccine regimen in Sierra Leone.

The authors acknowledged that calculating exactly how many lives the additional beds saved in Sierra Leone amounts to a bit of a guessing game.